Pieces of wall saved from the 1944 uprising are displayed against an enlarged picture of Warsaw that shows what the city looked like before its destruction. (Photo by June Tsai)
By June Tsai
Taiwan Journal sent staff writer June Tsai to Poland on a special assignment to write stories comparing the political systems, histories and cultures of Taiwan and Poland. This article, the last of the series, explores the development of memorial museums and their role in political transition. Through recording the horrors of the past, such museums help people to come to grips with the present.
Warsaw's Wola District and the year 1944 have become synonymous in recent years with Polish patriotism and the fight for freedom. Six years into World war II, an Aug. 1 uprising broke out in the city aimed at ending German occupation. Such affirmative action ended not in liberation, however, but in the destruction of 90 percent of the Polish capital and the massacre of between 40,000 and 100,000 civilians and prisoners of war by the Nazis. The Wola District, where the Warsaw Rising Museum opened 60 years later in 2004, is now a symbol of national remembrance and history.
In Taiwan, the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum commemorating the thousands of victims of the February 28 Incident of 1947 was established in 1997, the 50th anniversary of the event. The museum is themed around the conflict, suppression and massacre of local people after Chiang Kai-shek took over Japanese-occupied Taiwan at the end of World War II in 1945. The subsequent martial law period silenced open discussion of the massacre in Taiwan for many years, but the situation was finally addressed seriously with the opening of the museum at the site of the Japanese-built 1930 Taipei Broadcasting Bureau--important at the time of the incident as the latest developments were broadcast from there.
Both museums were born as Poland and Taiwan transformed themselves from authoritarian to democratic systems, and people's formerly suppressed memories of traumatic events from the past began to surface. According to Chen Chia-li, an assistant professor of museum studies at the Taipei National University of the Arts, five decades seems long enough for a generation to come to terms with the pain it suffered and to appeal for its address. Also, this period of time allows people to view the events in a way that is truer to the facts. "If it's too close in time, no one can bear to face the memories because they are too painful an experience to remember, or too cruel a truth to accept," Chen said Nov. 2.
Memorial museums have come into vogue since the turn of the new century. People have begun to remember numerous traumatic experiences from the last century, which was scarred by two world wars and countless human atrocities. The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the Imperial War Museum in London and the new Yad Vashem in Jerusalem are some of the most prominent examples of memorial museums opened in the last 10 years. It was only in 2001 that a Committee of Memorial Museums in Remembrance of the Victims of Public Crimes, or the ICMEMO, was set up under the International Council of Museums, a non-governmental organization created in 1946 for conservation of the world's natural and cultural heritage.
The ICMEMO states in its official website that "the goal of memorial museums is to commemorate victims of State, socially determined and ideologically motivated crimes." It also specifies that memorial museums "seek to convey information about historical events in a way that retains a historical perspective while making strong links to the present."
For Chen, memorial museums have everything to do with identity politics, in nations both new and old. Although aiming to commemorate, both the Warsaw Rising and Taipei 228 museums serve to shape collective memory and solidify identity with the new nations after emerging as democracies.
In the case of Poland, the country broke away from the Soviet bloc in 1989 and politically shook off the shackles of post-communism when votes for left-wing parties dropped to just over 10 percent in recent elections. In the case of Taiwan, the period of martial law was ended and the first opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party, was allowed to exist in 1987. Direct presidential elections took place in Taiwan in 1996. In both countries, present political dynamics played a role in how such museums are realized and in determining their success.
Explaining why the Warsaw Rising Museum did not come into existence until 15 years after Poland's 1989 transition to democracy, museum Deputy Director Pawe Ukielski said Sept. 24 that history was not in the mainstream of discussion after the end of communism. "The dominant voice said that we should forget the past and leave it to historians and look to build the future. Yet people gradually came to realize that it is impossible to build anything without a good foundation. Identity and history are the great foundation of every society," he explained.
The complete truth about the Warsaw uprising was buried during the communist era, first because of the dubious role of the Soviet Union during the rebellion, and second, for the fear that admitting the truth would render communist rule illegal in Poland. Insurgents, or their leaders, were vilified by the communist regime as the cause of Warsaw nearly being entirely destroyed by German forces in their efforts to suppress the insurrection.
The movement to see the long-desired memorial museum come into existence was initiated in 2003 by the then Warsaw Mayor Lech Kaczynski, who became Polish president in 2005. The project team solicited opinions and contributions of memorabilia from veterans, who also took an active part in bringing the museum to life. Amazingly, it took only 13 months for the museum to be ready so that it could open on the same day as the 60th anniversary of the uprising, Ukielski said.
Beginning life as a tram power plant, the transformed state-of-the-art multimedia museum now recreates events and details of each and every aspect of life in the city of Warsaw during the battle. Images, sounds and objects were installed in such a way as to convey the atmosphere of the time and have visitors come as close as possible to experiencing the 63-day battle.
"We wanted to tell the big history through small stories of individuals," Ukielski said. "It's always more touching if you hear the memory of a woman who survived the genocide in Wola District than to read that '40,000 people were killed during three days.'" The museum has attracted 800,000 visitors since opening, with 15 percent coming from abroad.
According to Chen, also author of 2007's Chinese-language "Wound on Exhibition: Notes on Memory and Trauma of Museums," museums such as the Warsaw Rising usually enjoy the support and love of the country's citizens, but Taipei 228 Memorial Museum is an unusual exception.
The reason lies in the fact that many of those who suffered--referred to either as "benshenren," being Taiwanese that were residents prior to 1945, or "waishenren," a term that encompasses Chinese that immigrated after 1945 and anybody representing the KMT regime--still live side by side today. With Taiwan having transformed itself into a democracy, these yet-to-be-reconciled two groups have divided views on such a museum, and current political struggle is undermining the effectiveness of the establishment, Chen said.
Taipei 228 was opened with the support of President Chen Shui-bian who was then Taipei mayor. Its establishment recognized emerging calls from all parts of society to deal with the loss suffered by victims of the February 28 Incident and the White Terror era--the subsequent political persecution carried out by the Kuomintang where thousands were jailed and many executed--by publicly acknowledging and commemorating the period. Families of victims are the main providers of exhibition objects. They also make up the largest group of volunteers working full-time in the museum.
Commenting on Taipei 228, Chen Chia-li said that the exhibition is generally in keeping with history, though it has a long way to go before becoming the ideal memorial museum. The permanent exhibition delineates the developments surrounding, leading up to and after the February 28 Incident from the perspective of local Taiwanese, as they were the first and primary victims in the incident. As a consequence, Taipei 228, like other museums of its kind, has visitors empathize with the victims. Yet, "to be captious, the exhibition does not really show how other groups or sub-groups of people felt and lived at the time, for example the perpetrators or women in general," she explained.
"It is technically very difficult to present all kinds of perspectives in a museum themed with the February 28 Incident," Chen said. "On the one hand, the victims' representatives insist that their sadness and loss need to be acknowledged. On the other, the 'waishenren' group still cannot accept this version of history with a calm mind. This is shown in the conspicuously low presence of 'waishenren' among museum visitors and their refusal to participate in interviews for museum studies," Chen added.
Therefore, identifying a way to represent the incident so the "benshenren" feel as if their suffering is being soothed while the "waishenren" do not see the museum as an accusation against them is a real challenge for curators.
Chen admitted that the irreconcilable situation has much to do with post-KMT politics, in which the incident was repeatedly used as a tool for mobilizing group feelings. In addition, she pointed out, changes in the city government have affected the organization of the museum, hence the effectiveness of promoting its original cause.
For Chen, a memorial museum should promote reflection on history and the reconciliation of different groups. This takes not only political will but also the wisdom to make a museum fair and interesting enough to bring visitors together from both groups living in the same society. This allows them to better know one another, pass down collective memories and avoid making similar mistakes in the future. "Museum professionalism must be respected in this regard," she said.
This article appears in Taiwan Journal Nov. 30, 2007.
In commemoration of those who died near Katyn forest April 10, 2010.
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